Ex Parte Franco

Patent Trial and Appeal Board

Jun 28, 2016

12236535 (P.T.A.B. Jun. 28, 2016)

UNITED STA TES p A TENT AND TRADEMARK OFFICE
APPLICATION NO. FILING DATE FIRST NAMED INVENTOR
12/236,535 09/24/2008 Lucas G. Franco
45095 7590 06/30/2016
HOFFMAN WARNICK LLC
540 Broadway
4th Floor
UNITED STATES DEPARTMENT OF COMMERCE
United States Patent and Trademark Office
Address: COMMISSIONER FOR PATENTS
P.O. Box 1450
Alexandria, Virginia 22313-1450
www .uspto.gov
ATTORNEY DOCKET NO. CONFIRMATION NO.
CA920070020US 1 8093
EXAMINER
PURI,VENAY
ALBANY, NY 12207 ART UNIT PAPER NUMBER
3624
NOTIFICATION DATE DELIVERY MODE
06/30/2016 ELECTRONIC
Please find below and/or attached an Office communication concerning this application or proceeding.
The time period for reply, if any, is set in the attached communication.
Notice of the Office communication was sent electronically on above-indicated "Notification Date" to the
following e-mail address( es):
PTOCommunications@hoffmanwarnick.com
PTOL-90A (Rev. 04/07)
UNITED STATES PATENT AND TRADEMARK OFFICE
BEFORE THE PATENT TRIAL AND APPEAL BOARD
Ex parte LUCAS G. FRANCO
Appeal2014-005892 1
Application 12/236,535
Technology Center 3600
Before MURRIEL E. CRAWFORD, PHILIP J. HOFFMANN, and
BRUCE T. WIEDER, Administrative Patent Judges.
CRAWFORD, Administrative Patent Judge.
DECISION ON APPEAL
STATEMENT OF THE CASE
Appellant seeks our review under 35 U.S.C. § 134 of the Examiner's
final decision rejecting claims 1-21. We have jurisdiction over the appeal
under 35 U.S.C. § 6(b).
We REVERSE.
1 "International Business Machines Corp. is the real party in interest."
Appeal Br. 1.
Appeal2014-005892
Application 12/236,535
Claim 1 is illustrative:
1. A computer-implemented method of optimizing a
manufacturing process to increase usage of recycling in said
manufacturing process, comprising:
describing the manufacturing process using a plurality of
nodes, each node representing a component or a process, wherein
the nodes include a plurality of nodes representing a component
and a plurality of nodes representing a process;
connecting the plurality of nodes with directed edges to form a
directed graph, the directed graph representing possible manufacturing
process flows from a begin node to an end node;
assigning to each edge a value representative of a benefit
resulting from usage of recycling in a component or process;
building a cost matrix representing an array of the plurality of
nodes, with values in the cost matrix representing the edge values
between nodes;
inverting the edge values in the cost matrix; and
determining, using a computer device, a longest path from the
begin node to the end node in the directed graph, based on the inverted
edge values in the cost matrix, to identify a manufacturing process flow
maximizing usage of recycling in the manufacturing process.
Appellant appeals the following rejections2 :
1. Claim 1 is rejected under 35 U.S.C. § 103(a) as being unpatentable over
Poppen (US 5,893,081, iss. Apr. 6, 1999), Tang et al., Disassembly
Modeling, Planning, and Application: A Review, Proceedings of the 2000
2 The Examiner rejects claims 8-21 on the same bases as claims 1-7. See
Final Action 15.
2
Appeal2014-005892
Application 12/236,535
IEEE International Conference on Robotics & Automation, IEEE
(Apr. 2000), Lecture Notes from George A. Constantinides, Professor of
Digital Computation, Imperial College (Jan. 15, 2007) (available at
http://cas.ee.ic.ac.uk/people/gacl/Synthesis/Lects5to8.pdf.) (referred to
as "ICL"), and Kobayashi (US 2005/0216249 Al, pub. Sept. 29, 2005).
2. Claims 1 and 3 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. § 103(a) as unpatentable
over Thierauf (US 2008/0077266 Al, pub. Mar. 27, 2008), Sbihi et al.,
Combinatorial optimization and Green Logistics, 40R: A Quarterly
Journal of Operations Research, 99 (June 1, 2007) (hereinafter "Sbihi"),
ICL, and Kobayashi.
3. Claims 2 and 4--7 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. § 103(a) as unpatentable
over Thierauf, Sbihi, ICL, Kobayashi, and Fusaro (US 5,561, 790, iss.
Oct. 1, 1996).
ANALYSIS
Appellant argues that "ICL fails to teach or suggest inverting the edge
values in the cost matrix to calculate the longest path in a graph." Appeal
Br. 8. The Examiner relies on ICL for this subject matter and directs our
attention to Lecture 8 at p. 4. See Final Action 8. We agree with Appellant.
Specifically, the cited portion of ICL states that "[a] shortest path can
then be achieved by inverting all weights." ICL, Lecture 8, p. 4. There is no
indication that determining a longest path is based on the inverted edge
values, as required by claim 1. Further, regardless of the level of skill in the
art (see Answer 6-7), the Examiner does not persuasively establish why it
would have been obvious to determine a longest path based on inverted edge
values.
3
Appeal2014-005892
Application 12/236,535
Based on the foregoing, we will not sustain the rejection of claim 1 as
unpatentable over Poppen, Tang, ICL, and Kobayashi; nor will we sustain
the rejection of claims 1 and 3 as unpatentable over Thierauf, Sbihi, ICL,
and Kobayashi, which suffers from the same deficiency. We also will not
sustain the rejection of dependent claims 2 and 4--7 as unpatentable over
Thierauf, Sbihi, ICL, Kobayashi, and Fusaro because the Examiner does not
rely on Fusaro in any way that cures the deficiency in the rejection of
claim 1.
Independent claims 8 and 15 each contain a limitation similar to the
above-discussed limitation of claim 1. Because the Examiner determines
that claims 8 and 15 and their respective dependent claims are unpatentable
for reasons similar to those advanced regarding claims 1-7 (see Final
Action 15), we also will not sustain the rejections of claims 8-21.
DECISION
The decision of the Examiner is reversed.
REVERSED
4